Manual

To pour water over the aloe,
the cyclamen, the jade plant, the cactus,
this, too, is prayer. Prayer in touching
my own dry lips, marveling at the fullness
beneath fingertips. Worship in hefting
the tea pot by its thick black handle.
Worship in squeezing the sudsy warm sponge.
Just yesterday, while we were driving,
Art said to me, “Why not open to the marvelous?”
I equated marvelous with the grand, the inexplicable,
even the strange. It didn’t occur to me then
that gripping the smooth, leather arc of steering wheel
is marvelous, cradling the white paper cup full of coffee
is marvelous, fingering the waffle pattern on the dishcloth
as I fold it is marvelous. Marvelous, flipping through
skin-thin pages of notebooks. Marvelous
and sacred, my palm resting on my husband’s thigh.
Marvelous, these knobby knuckles, how they
curl around the hair brush. Sacred,
the pillowed pads of these fingers, how they
trace the lines of my husband’s face,
how they twist and tug wool around the knitting
needles, how they tap at the keyboard to fashion
language out of feeling, how they rest above my heart
and translate into praise that beat, faithful and familiar.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer